WD Releases SMB Rack Mount Option

In an interview earlier this week with Thomas Gallivan, Vice President of Marketing at Western Digital, I had the chance to learn more about the company’s new Sentinel RX4100 device, as well as how WD plans to function in the SMB Channel. Needless to say, it was an interesting conversation. I learned that WD is currently celebrating 15 months in the SMB space, where they are supporting SMB Storage Servers.

“Following upon the success of our first SMB storage server, theWD Sentinel DX4000, we are responding to customer and partner requests to expand our portfolio with a solution for customers that have a rack based computing infrastructure,” said Gallivan in the interview.

Their new server solution is designed to help SMBs connect, protect and collaborate. According to Western Digital, the Sentinel RX4100 is an “On-premise cloud storage” solution that is hosted in one location, but can be accessed by employees at any office. All data is secured via a Microsoft Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials Operating System, and is also backed up online. Users may either perform bare metal or incremental restores in the event of a computer failure.

There are currently three available capacities, 8TB 12TB and 16TB, all of which are compatible with a wide variety of operating systems, including Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows 8 and Mac OSX Snow Leopard. Western Digital also announced that there will be a rack mount version of the Sentinel RX4100 released later this week.